{"id":1892,"date":"2025-09-14T18:46:38","date_gmt":"2025-09-14T22:46:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/?p=1892"},"modified":"2025-09-14T18:49:05","modified_gmt":"2025-09-14T22:49:05","slug":"making-god-smile","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/2025\/09\/14\/making-god-smile\/","title":{"rendered":"Making God Smile"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-audio\"><audio controls src=\"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Making-God-Smile-91425-6.43-PM.mp3\"><\/audio><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>A Sermon for the Salem United Church of Christ of Harrisburg, PA<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">by The Rev. James E. Eaton, Interim Pastor \u2022 \u00a9 2025<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">14<sup>th<\/sup> Sunday After Pentecost\/Year C \u2022 September 14, 2025<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><a href=\"https:\/\/lectionary.library.vanderbilt.edu\/texts\/?z=p&amp;d=75&amp;y=384\">Luke 15:1-10\u00a0<\/a><\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">One of the most astonishing things I\u2019ve ever seen is a just born baby learning to make mom smile. Have you seen this? A few years ago, I went to visit a mom with a new baby, a friend and church member. I expected her to be glad to see me; I expected her to be proud to introduce me to her child. What I remember is standing by the bed, ignored, irrelevant, as her new daughter tried out expressions, clasped tiny fingers and stared endlessly into her mother\u2019s eyes, eyes that never left her. The sounds were happy; mom\u2019s smile was quick and constant. After a few moments, she looked up at me, just a little embarrassed, as if caught at something and said, \u201cI\u2019m sorry, I\u2019m totally entranced.\u201d Calmly, enthusiastically, that new baby learned to make each of us smile at her and we did. So when we read in this text: \u201c&#8230;there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.\u201d, it\u2019s not hard to imagine the experience: we are meant to learn to make God smile like a baby teaching mom, and Jesus is giving lessons.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">That\u2019s a nice, feel good message for a Sunday morning. But does it have anything to do with our real lives? How do we make God smile; do we have to smile ourselves? How often we\u2019ve settled for a bland, smiling Christianity that never hears, never sees, the fear and trembling of those around. How often we\u2019ve gone home, scripture read, songs sung, sermon preached, as if the word, the songs, the preaching existed only in a world of endless smiles, while we ourselves live in a frowny face place where things hurt, and we constantly fear the next wave of grief or disaster will overwhelm us. Can we hold on to the smile of God in such moments?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Perhaps we begin to understand how when we see that Jesus teaches God\u2019s smile comes out of being lost, the experience that so terrifies us that we will do almost anything to avoid it. The Bible has two images of being lost. One is wandering in the wilderness, a place full of life-threatening danger, where the things we need\u2014food, drink\u2014are unavailable. God\u2019s people are formed in the experience of wandering the wilderness and Jesus himself is forced there after his baptism. Lost in the wilderness, Jesus meets a tempter who offers easy answers; he hangs on to being lost, until God finds him\u2014the story concludes, \u201cAngels waited on him\u201d. Another experience of being lost is grieving. Over and over again in the prophets, in the Psalms, we hear the anguished voice of God grieving for lost Israel, which has broken its covenant and left its Lord.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">We heard that in the reading from Jeremiah this morning. Jeremiah lived in a time of incredible violence. His home, Judah, went to war with the much more powerful Babylonia and was defeated; Jerusalem itself was destroyed, its leaders and many others exiled to Babylon.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I looked on the earth, and it was complete chaos, and to the heavens,<br \/>and they had no light.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I looked on the mountains, and they were quaking, and all the hills moved to and fro.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I looked, and there was no one at all, and all the birds of the air had fled.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">[Jeremiah 4:23-27]<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Defeat meant feeling deserted by God. The people were lost.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">When have you been lost? When has the darkness descended until you didn\u2019t know if there was a path, much less how to find it? There are griefs, there are losses, that leave us lost, wandering, uncertain, unsure, unable to find our way on our own. These past few weeks have seen two murders for political purposes and children shot at their schools. I know every time I read about this, it makes me feel lost. &nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">When Jesus speaks about the lost, this is what he means. There is nothing more helpless than a lost lamb. A lost dog will wander around and often return home. A lost cat will find its way back. Pigeons home; even a child may ask the way. Lost horses frequently return. But a lost lamb will not come home, will not return, will not come back. It will simply lie down and bleat its fear and the very sound becomes an invitation to predators: easy kill. What should be done about the lamb? The sensible thing of course is simply to abandon it; it\u2019s gone, and leaving the herd might endanger it. Yet here Jesus lifts up the lost lamb as the occasion that leads not only to a satisfied smile on the part of a shepherd but also: \u201c&#8230;when he comes home, he calls together his friends and neighbors, saying to them, \u2018Rejoice with me&#8230;\u2019\u201d The joy of the shepherd overflows into a party that invites his friends and neighbors.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The same is true in the other image Jesus shares. A woman\u2019s dowry was often worn around her neck in his time; to lose a piece was to lose the chance at marriage. Have you done what this woman does? Lost a wedding ring, an engagement ring, a special paper: searched and searched, moved papers, cleaned the whole house, cleaned out a drain, searching until it was found? Again: her joy overflows and creates a community of joy around her. Her joy, his joy, makes God smile.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">We live in a whole nation of the lost today. So many are afraid of losing homes; so many have lost jobs. Sons and daughters have been lost in wars. And there are so many voices of fear, angry voices, little Satans really\u2014for Satan just means \u2018tempter\u2019 and what they tempt us to give in to the idea that we can fix ourselves by abandoning others, that we can fix ourselves by hurting others. That\u2019s why we have such a plague of violence. Three hundred fifty years ago, Congregationalists, English reformed church folks just like us were scared too, and they let themselves get whipped up into literal witch hunts because someone said that would fix everything. They took their fear out on the least of their communities. This happens today: same thing in a different day and it has nothing to do with the life of Christ or the mission of Jesus.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">What Jesus does is just the opposite: he welcomes people, sinners, the lost, everyone to his table, to this table right here. The mystery Jesus offers is that the solution to being lost is to find someone; the joy of finding will overflow and create a whole community of joy. So he gathers the lost, sometimes called sinners, and he eats with them. He invites them to his table. Who belongs at this table? Everyone who has ever felt lost. Everyone who has ever wandered\u2014everyone! Gay people and straight people belong at this table; young moms and widows and the unemployed and the rich and middle-aged guys who are wondering why just working harder doesn\u2019t make them happier and women who are trying to figure out what to do after the kids are grown, single people and working people and retired people and people who have never been inside a church in their lives. When we gather them at the table of Jesus, when we find the lost and bring them in, we\u2019re helping Jesus and God smiles: there is joy in heaven.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">We know this instinctively and sometimes we practice it. One of the great things we do here is the clothing closet. It\u2019s a simple process: we all have clothing we don\u2019t wear, don\u2019t need. So do others. So we gather it up, size it, make it ready, and give it away. It\u2019s just like what Jesus does with Gods\u2019 grace: gives it away, free to anyone in need. We do other things as well. Christian Churches United helps us work with other churches helping people who are lost get found. It\u2019s the fulfillment of our prayer to walk in Christ\u2019s way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Timothy states the purpose of Jesus bluntly, clearly: \u201cJesus came into the world to save sinners\u201d&nbsp; If we are followers of Jesus, doesn\u2019t it make sense that we would be on the same mission? This is the beginning of a new year of programs here. It\u2019s a time to think about vision. We need to ask: what is Jesus doing? What can we do to help? And when we ask, we\u2019ll hear this call from the deep heart of God\u2019s Word, Jesus came into the world to save sinners. When we ask, we\u2019ll remember what Jesus said: finding someone who needs God and didn\u2019t know it, helping someone who needed us and didn\u2019t know it, is a reason to rejoice, a thing that makes God smile. That\u2019s it, that\u2019s my vision: make God smile. Let God\u2019s smile shine, until we can see where we\u2019re going, until we know we aren\u2019t lost, we\u2019re on the way God had in mind all the time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Amen.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We make God smile when we, like Jesus, find the lost and invite them into sharing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[371,108,3,2,32],"tags":[237,398,67,9,26,399],"class_list":["post-1892","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-luke","category-scripture","category-sermon","category-worship","category-year-c","tag-grace","tag-inclusion","tag-jesus","tag-joy","tag-parable","tag-smile"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1892","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1892"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1892\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1897,"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1892\/revisions\/1897"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1892"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1892"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firstreflection.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1892"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}